SAN DIEGO — A mountain lion was caught on a surveillance camera as it passed by the front porch of a home in a Mira Mesa neighborhood.
“I’m scared, I’m shocked that it’s in our neighborhood,” said Donabel Chea, who walks her dog every day in the area. “It’s such surprising news for me because we walk around here. It’s such a safe neighborhood.”
Chea has lived in the neighborhood since 2004 and said she has never seen a mountain lion in the area before.
“I hope that it’s gone and it went back to where it’s supposed to be, especially when there are kids in the high school and dogs walking around,” said Chea. “We don’t want them, you know, encountering a mountain lion.”
This comes after multiple sightings of a mountain lion in Oceanside last month as it roamed through parking garages and outside the Regal Cinemas theater.
“In the San Diego area, it is not as common but it’s not unheard of for this to happen,” said Tim Daly with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Daly said Friday’s sighting had been reported to the agency through their online wildlife incident reporting system, and that a wildlife conflict specialist from the department had been in contact with the person who reported it.
“We can sort of tell by the video that it is a young adult. We don’t know exact age or sex, but probably an animal that’s just on the move through that area,” said Daly. “Since there have been no calls or reports since that incident, we’re thinking that animal made it safely back to a habitat where it should be, you know, out in the wild, not roaming around one of our neighborhoods.”
In 2019, a 4-year-old boy was attacked by a mountain lion in the Los Peñasquitos Canyon Preserve. That mountain lion was subsequently put down, but Daly said such an attack is extremely rare.
“We have to understand that mountain lions in our state tend to be just as nervous around us as we are around them,” said Daly. “We’re not on their menu as I heard a biologist say in years past. They’d rather avoid us.”
Daly says mountain lions roaming through urban areas is nothing new, but with more cameras up around our homes these days, we’re seeing more of them when they do happen to pass through our neighborhoods.
“If you’re face-to-face out on a trail someplace, back up slowly, make sure you’re large, you’re noisy and be aware of what’s going on,” said Daly. “They’re not trying to harm us, but certainly considered to be dangerous if you’re in a tight area with them, and that mountain lion doesn’t have an obvious escape.”
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